I am back from a wonderful holiday in Cuba, where I got to chill, take the sun, visit the area I was staying in, snorkel,…
Have you noticed how you stop thinking about your daily worries and the things you should do, have to do, don’t want to do when you are on holidays? That’s right, you put your mind on hold, just to fully enjoy your time out of the 9-5 vortex. It is what happened to me, but something made me think when I got back. As my mind was beginning to get filled with thoughts of ending holidays, I realized that the worries creeping in were nonsense, as I am still on holidays. So why on earth would the day-to-day concerns get me if I still can relax and enjoy my time off? Because I am back in the city where I go to work, where I spend most of my days and nights and, while I put things on hold when I was in Cuba, the reality of them all appeared to me when I came back. And yet, they were already there when I left, I only changed scenery, and it was enough for my brain to stop thinking about them.
We create worry, we create doubt. And we all take holidays as an excuse to stop worrying. But holidays are just a moment in our year, we spend most of our time working, paying bills, socializing, fighting with our boss, setting the alarm for the next morning,… We therefore spend most of our time waiting for our excuse to stop thinking about everyday life and our daily worries. We like to beat ourselves up, don’t we? I don’t want this, I want my whole life to feel like holidays, and you should do the same, but it takes a change of perception. In order to do so, you need a certain awareness of what is going on in your mind, an acknowledgement of the pointless thoughts about pointless matters you have, in order to enjoy your day and see the bright side of your life.
Here is a little exercise I constantly do and you can try too: when a certain worry, thought or feeling causes you discomfort, try to identify it.
What are you thinking about?
Why are you thinking about it?
Get acquainted with your thought, and once you have fully identified it, address it.
Is the matter concerning? What is the core concern?
What solutions can you find? Is it something you can solve or is it out of your control?, etc.
You may have real problems to solve, we all have, but be aware that most thoughts we feed are superficial, and the more we feed a thought regarding the least important subject, the more we will perceive it as an insurmountable problem. And by the simple process of analysing a thought, we can simply erase it if useless, as we realize there is no need to feed it.
There is no hard work in looking into our mind if we have discomforting thoughts, and the more we become aware of our thoughts and concerns, the more we get the ability to identify interferences with our peace of mind, the one we naturally find every time we escape our routines for holidays. So make your everyday your holiday, you don’t need to be away to enjoy the calm and quiet of your mind, don’t be scared to approach it and tame it.